The Tower entry point looked the same as it always had, except for the seal on James’s wrist and the Bureau agents standing a polite distance back.

Niamh ran through it once, flat and quick. "You’ve given notice. You’re cleared for Floor 16 and nothing past it without a second notice. The seal stays on. You raise undead inside the Tower, that’s fine — that’s the Tower. You raise anything out here, we’ll know." She closed the tablet. "Go climb."

Finn, Ronan, and Cillian were already in gear by the gate. Ronan had the new shield on his arm, dark grey, the rim unmarked. Cillian had the black conductor wrapped along his forearm over the place the burn had been.

Maeve came in last, geared, the Apostle’s Radiant Circlet already on.

"Before anyone asks," she said, "I’m not here for one floor this time. If you’re climbing, I’m on the team. Properly."

"We know," Finn said. "Finn told us," he added, then frowned at himself, and Cillian snorted.

James looked at her for a second.

"You’re sure," he said. It wasn’t really a question. "Floor 15 was a job. This is the rest of it. Cormac, England, all of it follows the team now."

"I watched what followed you on Floor 15." Maeve adjusted a strap without looking up. "I’m choosing now because now I know what I’m choosing. That’s the whole reason."

Ronan shifted his shield. "She reads a fight two seconds before it happens. We nearly died on 15 without that. I’m not arguing."

"Then it’s settled." James didn’t make more of it than that. "Team Zero. Five."

That was the end of the speeches. They were people about to walk into a monster’s arena, and they spoke like it.

"Floor 16 is a known floor," James said. "No puzzle, no hidden wave, no trick condition. One arena, one monster, one objective. We kill the Cyclops."

He kept it short because they all already half knew it.

"Level 55. It’s slow, but it hits like a building. One clean swing kills anyone here who’s standing in the wrong place, so nobody stands in the wrong place. Its weak point is the eye, and it knows that, so it guards the eye the second it feels pressure. It swings a club, it stomps the ground, it throws boulders, and it goes into a rage state when its health drops low enough."

"Rhythm," Maeve said. "After a stomp, monsters that big always have a recovery window. Watch me. I’ll call them."

"Legs?" Cillian asked.

"Slow it down so it can’t reposition," James said. "You and Ronan. Cut the legs, keep it where we want it."

Finn said nothing. He didn’t need to. His job was the front, and everyone knew it.

They went in.

The floor dropped them into a wide stone quarry under the Tower’s flat grey sky. Cliff walls ringed it, and the ground was a mess of broken pillars, old bones, cracked rock, and loose boulders the size of cars.

In the center, something that looked like a statue stood with its head bowed.

Then its eye opened.

The Cyclops was massive, built like a siege engine made of muscle, a single eye set in a heavy brow and a club in its fist that had once been a stone pillar. Leather straps wrapped its forearms. It straightened, and the ground felt it.

[Floor 16 — Hunter’s Quarry]

[Objective: Defeat the Cyclops]

[Enemy Detected: Cyclops — Level 55]

[HP: 180,000/180,000]

Nobody waited to be told. They spread into their roles before the thing had taken its first step, Ronan and Cillian peeling wide, Maeve dropping back, Finn rolling his shoulders out front.

James opened with two skeletons, sending them in ahead to read its reach.

[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON]

The Cyclops swung once, almost lazy.

BOOM.

The club caught the first skeleton dead-on and turned it to a spray of bone. The second made it two more steps before the backswing took it too.

So much for flooding it with bodies. The thing erased a summon per swing, and James only had so many.

Finn stepped into the front before the club came back around.

"Eyes on me," he said, and slammed his axe flat against a fallen pillar to make noise.

The eye fixed on him.

Maeve’s voice came from behind, even and clear. "Club’s high on the right. It telegraphs the wrist."

James put a Necro Blast into that wrist.

[NECRO BLAST ACTIVATED]

[Cyclops HP: 180,000 → 176,800]

The black bolt rotted a patch of the leather strap and the grip loosened, just slightly. Finn came in under the loose swing and buried the vault axe into the inside of its forearm.

[FINN HALE — BERSERKER DRIVE]

[Cyclops HP: 176,800 → 169,400]

The numbers crawled. They could hurt it. They could not hurt it fast.

The Cyclops lifted one foot and brought it down.

WHUMP.

The stomp cracked the quarry floor in a ring, and the shockwave threw stone and dust out in every direction. Ronan got his shield down and braced and still slid back a meter. Cillian was a half-step slow and the edge of it clipped him, lifting him off his feet and dropping him on his side.

[CILLIAN WARD — HP: 900/900 → 620/900]

"Up, up," Maeve called, already moving her eyes across the field. "There — after the stomp. The eye’s open. One breath before the guard comes back. Every time."

[MAEVE CALLAHAN — FIELD READING]

[Weak Pattern Detected: Post-Stomp Recovery Window]

They built around it.

Ronan drove in at the back of one leg, shield first, then the blade behind it.

[RONAN CLEARY — PIERCING STEP]

[Cyclops HP: 169,400 → 158,900]

Cillian came off the other flank, the conductor flaring as he put a charged fist into the knee, and this time the lightning stayed in the line instead of biting his own arm.

[CILLIAN WARD — LIGHTNING IMPACT]

The Cyclops swung at him and James threw a fresh skeleton into the path to eat the blow, then reanimated a heap of old bones near its feet to drag at its ankle. The thing wasted a swing on the bait. The team got two more hits in the gap.

Then it scooped a boulder off the ground and threw it.

"Scatter!"

CRASH.

The rock blew apart against a pillar where Ronan had been standing, and the air filled with grit. The arena got smaller after that, the footing worse, the sightlines choked with dust.

The Cyclops’s eye turned red.

[Cyclops HP: 108,000/180,000]

[Warning: Cyclops has entered Rage State]

[Attack Speed Increased]

[Impact Radius Increased]

It stopped being slow.

The first chain of swings caught Finn across the chest and threw him ten meters into a pillar. The second nearly took Ronan’s head, and only the shield catching it sideways saved him, the hit driving him to one knee.

[FINN HALE — HP: 2,340/2,340 → 1,510/2,340]

James burned mana fast to keep something between the team and that club. He raised three more skeletons and forced them onto its swinging arm.

[GRAVE COMMAND ACTIVATED]

[Undead Unit Control Strength Increased]

The undead clamped onto the Cyclops’s wrist and held — not strong enough to stop it for long, but long enough. The killing swing aimed at the downed Ronan stalled for one full second.

Then the arm tore through them and the skeletons burst apart.

One second was all it had cost the Cyclops. It was all Ronan needed to get his shield back up.

"Thanks," Ronan grunted.

"Don’t waste it," James said.

Maeve saw it before any of them.

"It drops its head," she said, fast. "After a missed stomp, in rage — it lowers the head a breath longer. That’s the eye. That’s the window. Knees, now, on my call — three, two—"

The Cyclops stomped, missed as Finn rolled clear, and its head dipped.

"Now."

Ronan and Cillian hit the same knee from both sides, shield-blade and charged fist together, and James put a Necro Blast straight into the joint behind them.

[RONAN CLEARY — PIERCING STEP]

[CILLIAN WARD — LIGHTNING IMPACT]

[NECRO BLAST ACTIVATED]

[Cyclops HP: 72,300 → 61,900]

The leg buckled. The Cyclops dropped to one knee, the head sinking with it, the eye wide open and low.

Finn was already moving.

He was bleeding, half his HP gone, and he ran straight at it anyway. He hit the lowered forearm, drove the axe into it for a grip, and used it to launch himself up the arm in two hard strides.

[FINN HALE — BERSERKER DRIVE]

[Critical Weak Point Exposed]

He brought the axe down into the open eye with everything he had.

[FINN HALE — EXECUTION SWING]

[CRITICAL HIT]

[Cyclops HP: 61,900 → 18,400]

THUD.

The Cyclops screamed and reared back, and Finn rode it down and rolled clear as the giant clutched its ruined face.

It did not die. But the fight was no longer its.

Blinded, the Cyclops swung in wild arcs, smashing pillars to gravel, and one swing came close enough to take Cillian’s head before he dropped flat.

It was not aiming anymore. It was flailing.

James kept it turning the wrong way, dragging a reanimated body across its blind side so it chased a sound. Ronan and Cillian went back to the legs and took them out from under it. Maeve called the safe angle every time the club came down.

"Left, around — now Finn."

Finn came in under the last wild swing.

[Cyclops HP: 18,400 → 9,200]

[Cyclops HP: 9,200 → 2,100]

[FINN HALE — FINAL CLEAVE]

[Cyclops HP: 2,100 → 0]

The Cyclops came apart into light and fell, and the quarry went quiet except for five people breathing hard.

[Floor 16 Clear]

[Calculating MVP...]

[MVP: Finn Hale]

[MVP Reward: Giant Breaker Strike (B)]

[Active Skill — Charges one heavy strike with bonus damage against enemies larger than the user. Bonus damage increases when user’s HP falls below 40%.]